Harry Potter, Adam, and the Speghetti Monster

Thursday, August 30, 2012

A very interesting article that was posted on a group website that I'm a part of about the placebo effect. The placebo effect to a naturalistic magician is obviously very interesting, so I'm posting it in case anyone wants to take a look.

The second group was told by the doctors that they would be taking
"placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have
been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in
IBS-symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes".
"Not only
did we make it absolutely clear that these pills had no active
ingredient and were made from inert substances, but we actually had
'placebo' printed on the bottle," said Kaptchuk. "We told the patients
that they didn't have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take
the pills."
The results, published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, showed that the placebo pills were more effective at relieving symptoms compared with doing nothing at all.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In addition to being Lammas or the half-way point between the Summer Solstice and the Fall Equinox, yesterday was the last of July. July is a month where typically LGBT and/or gay pride is celebrated in many parts of Europe, North America and other places. I thought this post would be a good occasion to talk about LGBTI people in magical and shamanic practices.

For some time I had been aware of the fact that it was quite common in many aboriginal cultures in the Americas for gay, lesbian, bisexuals and transgendered people to assume ostensibly spiritual roles in the community as shamans, diviners, seers, spirit-workers or spell-casters. In Native American and First Nation communities, the term generally used in English is of "two-spirited people". The Dancing to Eagle Spirit Society, an advocacy group for two-spirits quotes Roscoe's Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology in defining the concept:

In Native American culture, before the Europeans came to the
America's, "two-spirit" referred to an ancient teaching. This type of
cross-gender identity has been documented in over 155 tribes across
Native North America (Roscoe 1988). Our Elders tell us of people who were gifted among all beings
because they carried two spirits, that of male and female. It is told
that women engaged in tribal warfare and married other women, as there
were men who married other men. These individuals were looked upon as a
third and fourth gender in many cases and in almost all cultures they
were honoured and revered. Two-spirit people were often the visionaries,
the healers, the medicine people, the nannies of orphans, the care
givers (Roscoe 1988). They were respected as fundamental components of
our ancient culture and societies. This is our guiding force as well as
our source of strength. This is the heart of Two-Spirited People of the
1st Nations (2 Spirit Nation of Ontario).

What I would eventually find out is that this pattern is quite common in many cultures across the world, spanning multiple continents. Daan Van Kapenhout stated as much in this interview from 1995:

Through his costume, the shaman relayed the message: "I am not a
man, I am not a woman, I am human." The Siberian shaman costume
expressed that all people are basically the same, that sex, age and
status are unimportant in their essence. To become a shaman, one had
to be both man and woman, because a person should be the sum total of
all human experiences. This idea was taken very seriously in many
Siberian - and some Native American - tribes. As part of the training
of the shaman-to-be, he or she was expected to live for some time -
anywhere from weeks to years - as a member of the opposite sex.
During this period, the aspirant had to think, act and dress like a
man if she was a woman, like a woman if he was a man. If the
candidate found this task too difficult, he or she could not continue
training to be a shaman.
Often, a person who successfully passed this part of their
shamanic "examination" would chose to continue living as a member of
the other sex. In some parts of Siberia, this was even expected of
all male shamans. Homosexuality and traditional - Siberian -
shamanism have always been connected. Many homosexuals do not feel
"at home" in the role expected of them by society, and this lack of
full identification with this role makes it relatively easy for them
to drop it in order to try a new one. Many traditional shamanic
cultures offered their homosexual members the possibility of living
with a partner: a gay or lesbian could become a shaman and change
sex, afterwards being able to marry a person of the same biological
sex. Usually such transformed shamans would be looked upon with awe,
fear or suspicion. They were considered to have very strong and
special magical powers and carried distinctive and important
responsibilities, yet their shaman costumes were androgynous, just
like those of the "normal" shamans.

To my way of thinking, this idea of LGBTs being magical or particularly suited to be spiritual leaders or members of a shamanic order in the community goes back to a concept which is basic to any definition of magic: transformation or change. Because one of the most ancient and natural methods of effecting change is through reproduction--the uniting of male and female. Some of the most universal magical tools (i.e. the broom, mortar and pestle, bell) are symbolic unions of male and female essences. This something alluded to by Julika Iles in her book The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, in which she states:

Female and male energies, yin and yang, are considered the most powerful radiant energies on Earth. Unifying these male and female forces provides the spark for creation, and what is a magical spell after all but an act of creation? Instead of a new baby, ideally new possibilities, solutions, hopes, and outcomes are born from each magic spell.

From that vantage point, it would make sense that many peoples would consider it a requirement for someone to have both male and female essences as part of them in order to intercede magically on behalf of the community. Someone who naturally has both could be considered naturally imbued with powers of change and transformation---inherently magical, as it were.

I am very wary of making broad generalizations of that type which could imply that an entire group of people (i.e. LGBTI) are inherently more attuned to magic than others. The perspective reflected by many of these cultures, however, offers a very useful insight.

Our societies tend to ridicule effeminate men and shun masculine women. Even in the gay community it is quite common for more masculine men (and not so masculine men) to ridicule more effeminate ones. This can only be an example of what psychologists call projection. I believe that most people have elements of their behavior and personality that are masculine and feminine, regardless of their biological sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. For some people that "ratio" might be clearly towards one direction (90% "masculine", 10% "feminine") or it might be much more balanced (60% "feminine", 40% "masculine"). If the first example is a biological male, it would be comparatively easy for him to simply suppress any expression of his feminine side, not just in terms of behavior, but also in terms of conscious perception. If the second example is a biological woman, she will face social pressure to suppress an even bigger part of her personality. If either one of them were magical practitioners, I would tend to think that suppressing either side would be rather costly. If magic has a huge psychological component and resonating with the deep self is necessary to be effective, it would follow that the less connected with the self one is, the harder it is to make magic. If we suppress our natural masculinity or femininity, we are suppressing a particularly potent source of magic; our own internal sense of creativity as symbolized by the joining of both "essences" inside of us. And that seems unnecessarily hindering, regardless of whether we're gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered or intersexed.

Further Reading:

Carpenter, Edward. Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk. 1921. Very old, but very concise and interesting read.

P.S. Just in case you're wondering about the candle--I used that for my personal pride celebration. It included petitions for each of the colors of the rainbow related to the LGBTI community, the world in general and myself. Then there were drums and dancing...

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About Me

I'm a spiritual atheist, a naturalist and a witch. I decided to set up a blog to dialogue about my solitary practice, philosophy, religion, culture, and anything else of related interest. (Oh, and I have a wicked sense of humor. Even though I'm not a wicked witch.)